28 June 2014

Before the kimomo, there was the kosode. Kimono, a familiar Japanese word meaning "thing-to- wear" came into use during the late 19th century. Its function was to distinguish between Japanese dress and the Western-style dress that Europeans brought with them as they flooded into a country previously closed to outside influences. In practical terms, the most noticeable difference was the size of the sleeve opening or armhole of the garment, and kosode translates .as "small sleeve."

This is by way of explaining why I have placed two kosodes from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum next to paintings by the Franchman Pierre Bonnard. As a participant in the group of young artists who called themselves Les Nabis (the prophets) in the 1890s, Bonnard was nicknamed le nabi tres japonard for his wholehearted admiration of Japanese art. Bonnard executed Woman in a Checked Dress (at left)and three other panels (now in the collection of the Musee d'Orsay), first by painting on silk fabric and then gluing it to canvas. The French call this technique maroufle.

In fact, the exuberant juxtapositions of patterns and lines, rendered flatly, that Bonnard and others were introduced to through the medium of Japanese woodblock prints, were images of courtesans wearing kosodes mostly, not kimonos. It was a major exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1890 that introduced le tout Paris to those ukiyo-e prints. From courtesan to bourgeois, the translation was dazzling. The Game of Croquet (below) was set at the Boonard family home in Iseres, and some of the players have been identified as (from left to right) the artist's father, his sister Andree, and her husband Claude Terrasse, a composer.

About his early works, Bonnard later said, "We were trying to go farther than the Impressionists and their naturalist impressions of color. After all, art is not Nature!" But this could give an incomplete impression of Bonnard's intentions. "I am of no school, I am only seeking to do something personal.".

24 June 2014

they tell me.“Look how we paved the yard.”
And there is the old roof, stone by stone,

flagging the court, but I can’t believe

that that strong old house collapsed on its
own.

It was a beautifully fashioned house,

Cozy, in human kindness furled,

But alas it had the same defects

As Grandfather’s vision of the world.

The thick slate roof was terribly heavy

And the house itself had no foundations.

Very slowly it sank into the ground

with fate of all houses and nations.

I’m sure that old house didn’t fall to pieces

But slowly, slowly of its own great weight

Sank till the roof is level with the earth

And now I walk like a cat on its slate.

Box-tress rise from the flues like smoke

While down below the hearth burns fair,

The pot is boiling – nothing is changed

In Grandfather’slost Atlantis there.

And father, a little boy is curled

In Grandfather’s lap.His eyes are wide.

“Quick, go to sleep now, the bogey man

is on the roof.”Father listens, terrified.

Yes!There is something there! He shudders

Deliciously and hearing proof

He falls asleep and dream, he dreams

My heavy footsteps on the roof.

It is cruelly hard to build a roof

that time’s foundation can hold in place.

The superstructure (as Marx would say)

Should never overload the base.

And those who write should think of things

as real as roof-trees, tall and straight,

Someone with lightening in his wings

Has started walking on our slates.”

- Roofs by Lyubomir Levchev,
translated from th Bulgarian by William Meredith, in Poets of Bulgaria, Greensboro, Unicorn Press: 1986.

Lyubomir Levchev (b.1935) was a prominent
member of the Bulgarian Writers association under the Communists.

Blaga Dimitrova (1922- 2003) was more openly
critical of Bulgaria’s communist government in her work than many others. While working as a journalist, she visited Vietnam
several times, where she adopted a daughter in 1967.During the 1970s, four of her books were
rejected by the state press for publication After the fall of communism,
Dimitrova served for two years (1992-93) as Vice President of Bulgaria.One
of the most respected writers from Eastern Europe, Dimitrova's poems have appeared in the United States in Ms. and other magazines.

Bulgarian
literature is not well known in the English-speaking world even though Bulgaria
has a long history, stretching back more than thirteen hundred years.While William
Meredith has described the function of poets in American culture as ornamental,
that is not that caes\\se in eastern Europe where poets are accorded a place of
honor. Americans are free to write what they want but often focus on trivia and
use few of the tools in the poet’s quiver.By contrast, writers constrained by repressive governments are often
ingenious in presenting serious and controversial ideas.The poems I chose to reproduce here are both
typical and outstanding examples of metaphor and fable deployed to raise
metaphysical questions shared by writer and readerLevchev plays with the history of his
grandfather’s house, critique an entire society in the process, with a pinch of
the nose to Marxist orthodoxy along the way.Dimitrova uses harmony in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to a similarly
subversive effect.Even finer, I think, is Bulgarian Woman From the Old Days in
which Dimitrova’s large intentions do nothing to obscure the woman she memorializes.

Dimitrova is said to have
inspired the character named Vera in John Updike’s story
“The Bulgarian Poetess” which appeared in the New Yorker for March 13, 1985..“He
was attacked by the romantic vertigo of men traveling alone,” Updike writes of
his alter-ego, Henry Bech, when he meets “Vera” at a writers conference in
Sofia. The American Updike does himself no favors but a rough justice here: he creates a character as self-absorbed and clueless is himself.

“Bach
gave to all an equal right –

no
voice is made to serve as mere

accompaniment
or background for

a
privileged superior.

And
so through time a prayer ascends

in
single spirit, and in many senses:

power
in a unity depends

on
little independences.”

-Of Bach and Harmony

“This
is how I remember her from the old days –

saving
all her life.

Preposterously
turning over

worn-out
clothes,

knitting
every loose end,

patching,
darning tying up.

And
to her very last, remaining

true
to the thrift

she’s
famous for: she has become

diminutive
herself, as if

to
save a scrap

of
the space she occupies.

The
way I see her now

She
could tumble right

Into
the laundry basket –

scuttling
around, a little mouse,

with
everything about her

turning
to a trap.”

-Bulgarian Woman From
the Old Days

“Thank you, day for being gone.

And
thank you, gift, for being for me.

And
for the shade of thorns above,

its
work of wood and innocence of leaf,

for
blue in all its shapes and shadows,

clouds
of thunder, routed in rain,

for
pain, a love without a remedy,

for
breath, the words that may

replace
it.And especially

among
the multitude of things

I
thank you for not forcing me

To
thank you on my knees.”

-Vespers

Because the Sea is Black by Blaga Dimitrova,
translated from the Bulgarian by Niko Boris and Heather McHugh, Middletown,
CT., Wesleyan University Press : 1989.

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Why The Blue Lantern ?

A blue-shaded lamp served as the starboard light for writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's imaginary journeys after she became too frail to leave her bedroom at the Palais Royale. Her invitation, extended to all, was "Regarde!" Look, see, wonder, accept, live.

"I think of myself as being in a line of work that goes back about twenty-five thousand years. My job has been finding the cave and holding the torch. Somebody has to be around to hold the flaming branch, and make sure there are enough pigments." - Calvin Tompkins